US General Election 2016

Pettytyrant101 wrote:.... and stuck a large cigar ....}}}

I never knew Scotshobbits could be so extravagantly wasteful with their smokes!

Bluebottle wrote:Long, but interesting

It is interesting. I think his point about the American myth of Wealth = Goodness is well taken for a certain subset. I think the myth could also be generalized to Success = Goodness which would go farther to explain why so many Trump voters I've met acknowledge that they'd previously voted for Obama (neither of which conflicts with Halfy's Missile-at-Washington theory).

I never knew Scotshobbits could be so extravagantly wasteful with their smokes! - David

{{Its not wasteful They light it }}

Mrs Figg wrote:its better not to play this in public.   thought it might lighten the mood

David H wrote:

Bluebottle wrote:Long, but interesting

It is interesting. I think his point about the American myth of Wealth = Goodness is well taken for a certain subset. I think the myth could also be generalized to Success = Goodness which would go farther to explain why so many Trump voters I've met acknowledge that they'd previously voted for Obama (neither of which conflicts with Halfy's Missile-at-Washington theory).

There are certainly a lot of intersting questions to be asked, and perhaps even answered, about the fact that a substantial minority of americans elected Donald Trump president, when a lot of them would never have voted for the people he will put in executive government positions and the politics they'll lead for the united states. Somehow the personality of Donald Trump was able to get Tea Party politics into the White House. Very interesting, certainly

{{So whats Trump up to with China?

Theres seems two instant possibilities to me-

1. He is utterly out of his depth and took the Taiwanese call without knowledge of what he was doing. Likewise he was equally ignorant of his actions when he tweeted using the terms 'country' and 'President' in regard to Tawain against US foreign policy for about 40 years across all Admins. And his recent anti-China tweets on currency and trade are just him lashin back at China after they lodged a formal protest ove r the phone call.

2. He knew exactly what he was doing when he took the call and when he used the terms country and President and the follow up tweets were made to deliberately seem provocative to China. He is doing this to show China that if they want to have trouble and fights over trade, sovereignty in the region ect he will give them it, unless they cut some new deals with him that are more in US terms and favour the US.


If its 1 we are all in the shit. and if its 2 thats a hell of a gamble to take. }}}

Relax. He's just grabbing China by the ... What could be wrong with that?

I think he may have had a momentary pause when the call came, vaguely realizing this may be something touchy, then thought "Aw f&%$ it, I can damn well do whatever the hell I feel like" and took the call.

This is only between China and the US, I sort of struggle to understand why the rest of the world would care except as a point of amusement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/trumps-threat-to-the-constitution.html?

Oh the man's a complete idiot. But I think those around him will not allow any overstep - people are working with him for self-serving political reasons but deep down everyone in Washington loathes him and will only let him go as far as they see it being useful. At least that's my belief.

We have a nearly unprecedented moment in our history: not only is the national government but nearly 2/3 of state governments are in the control of a single party. They may not have my agenda, but I think at least the most obvious and egregious faults in our current government system will be addressed. Money will flow again. Trump may actually get Republicans to spend money on infrastructure, something not seen since Eisenhower.

The Republicans seem interested in putting in place something that looks suspiciously like Obamacare. Without a mandate that everyone must participate I'm not sure it will work, but Obama has left a mark they cannot undo, so now that he's gone at least they'll play along and pretend it was their idea. The result may be much cleaner legislation....IF it works.

So I'm cautiously optimistic that the Trump wave will bring in some badly needed efficiency, traded off by the loss of environmental and financial regulation that will come back to bite us later; but hopefully will be replaced at the next swing of the pendulum.

{{Bye bye environment- Trump just appointed a man who believes global warming is a hoax has head of the US environmental Agency. The coal fires will be burning, the oil will flow, the land will be fracked. People will be evicted from their homes (probably Indians). And as a result almost certainly the weather worsens, extremes of weather become ever more frequent America will suffer worsening droughts and tornadoes, possibly increased earthquakes from fracking activity (no one knows long term effects yet) the water table will be polluted and the atmosphere in parts of the US in coal areas will have all the health problems and deaths long associated with the industry.
And in the meantime China and Europe will continue to advance new green energies and when one type of tech finally overtakes the other the US will have nothing.

Assuming Trumps economic policy of bribing companies with tax breaks to remain (giving incentive to every big company to pretend to be moving) and slashing corporation tax either all your services are going or its just good old fashioned boom and calamitous bust Reaganomics.

If we're lucky. And he hasn't provoked a war with China over Taiwan by then whom he seems to have accepted a call from at the lobbying pressure of Bob Dole who has received 200,000 dollars and a further 20,000 a month every month this year from Taiwan and who already got various Taiwanese interests into the Trump campaign early on - "It's fair to say that we had some influence," Dole said. "When you represent a client and they make requests, you're supposed to respond." Wasn't lobbiest one of the things he was going to drain?
So risk provoking and offending China, for cash. Good start.

Maybe time to build a bunker....}}}}

looking on the bright side we only have 4 years of this tweeter to stomach. 4 years is nothing in Earth years, any damage could be overturned once he is gone. as for Taiwan he is totally out of his depth, and hopefully they are sensible enough to understand and make allowances.

Unfortunately I think it's easier to remove regulation than put it back, so his legacy will last more than 4 years. Our biggest problem is the anti-science mindset of half of this country, so can't be swayed by logic.

{{{And who dont think facts are relevant- that Conway was being questioned on Trumps claim the Boeing deal was billions rather than hundreds of millions it actually seems to be- and she replied that whether it was or not was 'a technicality'. Yeah cause thats what facts are- just unfortunate technicalities to be brushed aside as trivial! }}}

The Clinton win in the popular vote got pretty substantial by the end

yeah, a bunch of people are gonna find out they've been played. Of course, all politicians make promises they can't or won't keep, but Trump has been in a class of his own.

its amazing stuff.  those people in the audience looked nonplussed.

Ha. Sunday talking heads, given how Trump his squandering his post election period by still talking to his own supporters instead of the nation as a whole, are holding up GEORGE W BUSH as a model of statesmanship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html

That's a rather biased article: there's me-first-ism happening in both parties. But we've had it before around the 1900's, so I'm hoping this is just another wave that will pass.

Hope is the spirit of christmas

Jesus Fucking Christ. Krugman implies that he only just started reading about Ancient Rome in detail and holy shit does it show.

1. The Roman Republic was not a democracy in the way that modern, "liberal democratic" (to use the poli sci term) republics are. It was an aristocratic oligarchy that supported itself on mass slavery and imperial conquest. You could draw (imperfect) parallels to 19th century America, but the Roman Republic never moved away from those practices or democratized in the way that the US did; instead it got worse as it went on, which contributed to its instability.

2. The Roman Republic did not have political parties in the same way that we do today. The class- and family-based system of factions in Ancient Rome does not map onto how partisan politics works today, especially not the increasingly ideologically consistent parties of the past few decades. Nor was the Roman Empire a "one-party state" by any conceivable definition.

3. The Roman Republic fell after a century of frequent civil wars and assassinations that had become practically everyday features of politics. Even if you agree with Krugman that American democratic institutions have been eroding for decades, the situations are not comparable.

4. A big part of the instability of the late Republic came from the legions having more loyalty to their commanders personally than to the Republic as a whole. I hope I don't have to explain that this is not the case in modern America.

I don't want to come across as defending Trump because I think he's bad for the country, but I can't and won't condone ignorance or historical illiteracy regardless of which side it's coming from. {{{I probably just shouldn't try to talk about politics at all.}}}